Grande Prairie may become a petrochemical refining hub for northwest Alberta.

This follows a report by the Energy Diversification Advisory Committee (EDAC) noting the Government of Alberta should allocate more funds for bitumen upgrading in the province. They identified Grande Prairie, Joffre – near Red Deer - and Medicine Hat as areas that need improvements.

“This is about building on the strengths we have, especially in the Grande Prairie region, and upgrading our raw resources and creating higher value products,” said Margaret McCuaig-Boyd, minister of energy.

EDAC was formed as a way to look for opportunities that would increase the value of the province’s resources and create more jobs around partial upgrading, refining, petrochemicals and chemicals manufacturing.

The bulk of the plan sees the province spending $1 billion over the next eight years from loans and grants in upgrading facilities to diversify the energy sector.

They hope they can attract as many as five new upgrading facilities, representing $5 billion in investing and creating 4,000 construction jobs.

Although support for partial upgrading of oil sands bitumen will be built around the industrial heartland near Fort Saskatchewan with pipelines and processing operations nearby, a downstream energy cluster may be established in Grande Prairie because of its proximity to the Montney and Duvernay region with access to rail infrastructure that reaches the Port of Prince Rupert.

If a cluster were to be created, it would be part of a value chain in processing natural gas expanding to new pipelines and power supplies to the plant.

“There’s really unlimited potential in Grande Prairie for development in the downstream sector,” McCauig-
Boyd said.

McCauig-Boyd didn’t divulge details of the plan for Grande Prairie but said information on specific initiatives would be disclosed in the coming weeks.

“We have a highly skilled workforce in the Grande Prairie region, so we’re really right to be an area where we can develop the downstream and create those value added jobs in our region,” said
McCauig-Boyd.

The government is working on ways to open up new markets and attract private investments, create jobs and ensure they’re not only shipping raw resources but making better use of them in the province.

“We stand on some of the best resources in the world. There’s a lot of interest from the world in our region so we need to set ourselves our so the world wants to come in and invest in the Grande Prairie area,” said McCauig-Boyd. “We’re already seeing in our region the economy is looking up.”

McCauig-Boyd pointed to the plans of the new industrial park through the Tri-Municipal Industrial Partnership where the City of Grande Prairie, County of Grande Prairie and MD of Greenview will work together to create an area structure plan on 355 km of crown land for investments from national and international companies.

“It’s pretty exciting times in the next while for our region and we’re certainly committed to doing the work that will ensure our energy future is built to last,” said
McCauig-Boyd.